Riki Wessels, a batsman-wicketkeeper, is the son of the former Australia and South Africa player and former Northants coach Kepler Wessels.

Although Riki was born in Australia, he grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, due to his father playing for the South Africa cricket team, having previously played for Australia when South Africa were banned from Test Cricket.

Cricket was not quite an automatic choice for Riki - he dabbled in hockey - but at 18 he made the decision to head for the UK. Unsurprisingly, Wessels began his county career at Northants, identifying himself as a player of promise after scoring a maiden first-class century in 2005 against Somerset.

Wessels had to be released by Northants at the end of 2009 when the ECB criteria on Kolpak qualification was tightened. He moved to Zimbabwe to play for the Mid West Rhinos, but was pursued by Nottinghamshire, who wanted a back-up wicketkeeper for Chris Read who could also add to their batting resources. Controversially, they exploited a loophole that enabled Wessels to join the county on an Entrepreneur Visa in April 2011. The rules were altered specifically to exclude sportsmen shortly afterwards.

After modest first-class returns in 2011, when he averaged 20.21 from 10 matches, he enjoyed a much more successful 2012 season, particularly in first-class cricket, where he began in the middle order but later established himself as an opener. His aggregate of 905 runs was his biggest in England, as was his average of 45.25. His three first-class centuries included a career-best 199 against Sussex at Hove.

Although unable to match such standards the following year as Notts' perennial issues with their opening batting spots looked no closer to a solution, he bounced back in impressive style in 2014, being named as Nottinghamshire's player of the year after scoring 1,667 runs across all formats and passed 1,000 Championship runs for the first time.